7 years ago on Martin Luther King Jr's birthday, I wrote this post about the ideas in his Letter from a Birmingham Jail. Today I went back to the letter and re-read it, and a different section stood out at me, one that is really profound well beyond the context of civil rights:
"Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly."
Dr. King was a brilliant communicator, able to distill deep, profound ideas into memorable phrases.
Today on MLK's birthday, I'm thinking about the overall lack of progress we have made as a society on the very issues he discussed in his letter, namely the structural segregation and dehumanization of black Americans and other marginalized groups. And also about the other issues facing the planet, like the climate crisis, that represent the same sense of mutuality.